Age is an important dimension of social organization. Age-grading of life events, whether on the basis of biological age or some sociocultural substitute, is to be understood for its implications for ontogenetic processes of aging within the human organism and for endemic social processes such as social control, allocation, and stratification. The degree to which and how social systems use age as a basis of social organization are matters to be explained. A better understanding of the "function" of age in society can be reached by studying the socio-institutional bases of age-related behaviors. Data for three historically central birth cohorts of Norwegian males permit an examination of the historical patterns of normative age-graded events in connection with institutional changes and population transformations such as industrialization and urbanization. Similar investigations of life-course transitions into middle adulthood from adolescence will be conducted for U.S. men born during the Great Depression, permitting cross-cultural contrasts. Both studies provide retrospective, continuous events data across more than a dozen life domains. These data permit the development and application of new methodological and statistical approaches to the study of aging, adult human development, and life cycle processes; implications of these planned methodological developments for longitudinal research run beyond the specific substantive objectives of this project. Objectives: 1) identify some historical and sociological bases of age-graded events; 2) analyze statistical profiles of careers within and among life domains; 3) analyze age-grading and normativity through middle adulthood; 4) model work histories and other career trajectories; 5) identify consequencces of non-normative life course behaviors; 6) develop appropriate statistical models for longitudinal analysis of behavior; 7) model the error structure of retrospective life events protocols; 8) assess the validity of retrospectively reported continuous life histories; 9) formulate a strategy of quantitative analysis of life course events.